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The Well-Tempered Clavicle

I’m back on my coffee grind hardcore and starting to think about drinking again. The other day I had a taste of rum for professional purposes and I was like hoo damn I could probably drink some of that. But I don’t have any here anyway so it will be a while before I am singing the hurdy gurdy and toasting the cat.

I am still working through Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland which my book guy gave me to inspire me to write crazy shit but it’s pretty hard. I’ve been meaning to read Donna Tart’s The Goldfinch since it came out a few years ago, but today I finally got it at the library. I also read David Mamet’s Three Uses of the Knifewhile I was there. It was an amazing book about drama and art in general. He says “the purpose of ‘information’ is not to share truths but immobilize and enervate the soul.” By ‘information’ he’s talking about 700 TV channels (he wrote it in 1998).

It was a long walk to the Brooklyn Central Library on Grand Army Plaza. I walked through Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights. I helped a guy get into a building. He was wearing an expensive clothes. I hope he wasn’t an assassin, or if he was, I hope he was a good one.

I ate cereal for breakfast but I didn’t have coffee like usual. Lately everything I eat fucks up my stomach. I think it’s because I’m doing it wrong. I usually eat to fast, or too many different kinds of things, or too much of one thing. I feel like the humbug in The Phantom Tollbooth after King Azaz’s feast. So today when I got home from the library at three, I willed myself to eat slowly and only a little bit of some similar vegetables. Now I am waiting it out to see if that was a good idea. And I just made some coffee and god damn it is good.

I’m listening to Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier but I almost called it The Well-Tempered Clavicle because I of course don’t know anything about this shit. I’m really trying to appreciate classical music, especially Bach, because everyone, even David Mamet, says he is the Shakespeare of music. And I usually read classic books but I’m more into new-ish music.

Did you know that in 1960 Norton Juster met a kid in Brooklyn who asked him what the biggest number was and that would later inspire a scene in The Phantom Tollbooth? Maybe it was Carl Sagan. He would have been 26 at the time. Makes sense to me. Also, in the first draft, Milo’s name was Tony Flanders.